Close quarters

by Victor Milán

  If Hosoya really is dirty, Cassie thought, I hope Percy's not in on it.

  The thought took her by surprise. Why should I care?

  She opened her purse to take out her compact and touch herself up. It was the sort of female gesture that a Drac male literally would not see. Then she put her compact away, reached down to adjust her skirt—and slipped the disk-shaped bug she had palmed from its hiding place inside the compact onto the underside of her chair.

  One surface of the matte-black polymer disk was covered with a special molecular bonding adheres-instantly-to-anything patch, recovered lostech from the time of the Star League. She'd been warned to avoid touching the sticky surface at any cost once she activated the bug. Suddenly turning up with an audiovisual bugging device affixed to her hand could be tricky even for the Planetary Chairman's new enamorata to explain.

  Cassie wasn't sure how the thing worked. She knew it was passive electro-optical, not holographic. She didn't want to be zapping lasers all over the Tanadi CEO's office for precisely the reason she hadn't wanted to do it in the warehouse where she'd watched Ninyu Kerai's meet with Sumiyama. Mirza Abdulsattah had assured her the bug was unlikely to be found. It had a low ferrous content and used almost no energy while inactive, and was consequently hard to detect. Moreover, the peculiar arrogance of Drac executives meant Hosoya was unlikely to deign to have his office swept for bugs—as he was too proud to submit to having surveillance cameras spying on him in his sanctum.

  What it would do, she was told, was watch. And wait. When the tiny nanoprocessor inside—yet more lostech turned up in the frantic searches stimulated by the Clan invasion—spotted something it thought was significant, it would record it, compress it, and zap it in a microsecond burst to receivers hidden near Tanadi Tower. At that point it was almost certain to be discovered; the building would be blanketed with sensors seeking unauthorized transmissions. But it would have done its job.

  Cassie has little faith in fancy tech, Star League or not, and had no idea how it would "know" if it had witnessed something significant enough to transmit or not. But it was their only chance to get the red-haired man off the trail of Chandrasekhar Kurita—and the Caballeros.

  It was also the reason for her entire elaborate charade with Percy Fillington, Earl of Hachiman. As soon as Cassie had it in place, it was as if she were filled and drained at the same time. She felt both elated and let down.

  Stay alert, she told herself, and concentrated on being the perfect ornament.

  31

  Masamori, Hachiman

  Draconis Combine

  30 October 3056

  Cassie sat in a pool of afternoon sunlight on her bedroom floor with legs outspread and arms locked in front of her, leaning forward in a stretch. Hidden monitors would view obvious martial arts practice with suspicion. A noble's consort, however, was expected to keep herself in perfect shape.

  After meeting with Hosoya, the Planetary Chairman had sent her back to Stormhaven in his personal chopper. From his distracted manner, he apparently had urgent business to transact, giving her no more than a perfunctory hug and peck on the cheek.

  The tension in her gut told Cassie what that business was. She had no hard evidence. But she knew.

  A small holovid played in the corner of the bed chamber. It was to supplement her bimbo image; Cassie had never had much taste for canned entertainment. As she leaned forward far enough for her chin to touch the carpet, she saw the HTE Compound recreated in miniature on the holo platform.

  She reached for the remote control, turned up the sound. In the foreground a female reporter was asking towheaded Private Mangum of Scout Platoon, "Why do you fight?"

  He rubbed the side of his nose with his thumb, spat, grinned moronically at the camera, and said, "For the money. Why else?"

  Scenes were shown of Caballeros lounging in rec halls, playing pool, arguing, or standing and drinking and gazing bleary-eyed into the camera. Most of the faces displayed were white or black, primarily of ethnic Cowboys. While there were plenty of blacks and whites in the Combine, they weren't the majority, overall or, on Hachiman. Most of the Combine's population, in fact, didn't look all that different from the norteño and Indian contingents of the Seventeenth.

  Cassie's heart fell. If she needed confirmation that the hammer was about to fall on the Regiment, here it was. The Masamori media were slanting this story hard to make the mercenaries look greedy, loutish, and alien: gaijin. Coverage of First Battalion's procession through Masamori to the Compound had been favorable; the media had paid the Seventeenth slight attention since then, except in the wake of the Blake attack, and that coverage had been positive too. The sudden change could only have been mandated from above.

  You know who it is, a voice said in her head. Percy. Yet while Percy had probably approved the sudden smear against Chandy and his hirelings, she doubted he was behind it. It had to be Ninyu Kerai rearing his ugly red head.

  With a jerk of her thumb the holo vanished. I've got to get back, she thought in something like panic.

  The Mirza had to know that her mission was accomplished—or at least, had to know she'd had her one shot at accomplishing it. Her unknown friend on the Earl's staff had left the bug taped under her sink the night before, after all. She still didn't know if it was Yoritomo or not, but whoever the HTE plant was, he or she knew Cassie was to see the Tanadi CEO today. Persumably the spy also knew she was back.

  She had asked Abdulsattah about extraction after the mission. Every extra second she spent in proximity to Fillington increased the likelihood of exposure. His spies—and perhaps Ninyu's—were still digging into her background. Sooner or later they'd undermine the foundation, and the whole facade would come crashing. Or she might slip. Cassie was sublimely confident of her ability to run a scam, but much as she hated to admit it, she wasn't perfect.

  The Mirza had told her not to worry about it. They would come for her.

  She wondered when. Irrationally she was convinced she'd be discovered any minute. Every possible little misstep she'd made since Uncle Chandy's party began to blare in her mind like klaxons.

  And even if she wasn't caught, she couldn't bear the thought of any threat to her "family" while she was unable to help. The irony of her desperation to leave the present comfortable safety of the Planetary Chairman's villa for ground zero in the HTE Compound never occurred to her.

  Control yourself, Cassie told herself. If you panic, you're done for. She made herself breathe deep, told herself she'd been in tight situations before. She was just reassuring herself that if Abdulsattah didn't extract her, she'd just have to find a way to get back on her own when an explosion boomed from the front lawn.

  She jumped up and ran to the side of the sliding-glass doors that gave onto her little balcony, twitched the opened curtain aside slightly so she could peer out without much risk of being seen.

  A troop-carrier helicopter sat on the lawn, main rotor slowing to visibility as dark-clad figures poured out the door, hunched over machine pistols.

  The staccato boom of another rotor directly overhead rattled the glass. Cassie turned from the window. The intruders weren't wearing standard DEST commando drag, but that didn't mean they weren't ISF. Over the last few days she'd covertly identified a number of boltholes, ranging in location from pantry to basement to sundry broom closets. She intended to dive into one and not come out until she had a better idea who all these masked people with guns were.

  Before she could do any of that, the door to her chamber opened. Gupta Yoritomo stood staring at her. Cassie had left the door locked, but her reaction on seeing him was relief.

  "Gupta," she said grinning, "I'm glad it's—"

  He raised his arm and she suddenly found herself looking down the big double bore of a holdout gyrojet pistol.

  "I knew you were a spy," Gupta said in the same silky, slightly bored voice as always. "Now I'm going to kill you."

  Cassie stood there flatfooted, gaping at him. She had just enough t
ime to think, What the hell's wrong with you, freezing like this? His finger was tightening on the firing stud when suddenly the balcony's glass doors exploded inward in a hurricane of glass fragments. It was as if a naughty child had dipped a brush in red paint and spattered the front of Yoritomo's immaculate white tunic with it. He reeled back three steps, looking down at himself.

  Then, face contorted as if in rage at the spoiling of his clothes, he aimed his sneaky cone-pistol at Cassie again.

  This time she had the presence of mind to drop behind the bed. A tall figure stepped through the ruined door, releasing a rope from carabiners fixed to its harness with one gloved hand. The other held a compact Shimatsu 42 machine pistol, its barrel swollen by an integral suppresser. With a sound like a string of firecrackers going off, the intruder walked toward the Planetary Chairman's aide, emptying the magazine into his chest and blasting him right back into the hall.

  In the doorway the figure stopped, gazed through its gas-mask at Yoritomo, now sprawled outside Cassie's field of vision. Then it nodded and dropped the spent box from its weapon.

  As the masked figure took a new magazine from a harness pouch and slammed it home, he turned toward Cassie. A patch showing a blade-down broadsword emblazoned the front of his black woolly-pully sweater.

  Word of Blake! she thought. The terrible inertia that gripped her when Yoritomo entered had evaporated. In pentjak-silat, if you couldn't run from a weapon, you rushed it. She snatched a pillow from the bed, hurling it straight into the masked face with the same motion. She followed it, diving across the bed, hitting the floor, rolling, coming up with hands clawing for the weapon and a knee targeted for the juncture of the black-clad legs.

  The figure was pulling off the gas mask and laughing in her face. "Jesus boy howdy, Cassiopeia," Lieutenant Junior Grade William Payson said, dancing back into the hall and fending her off with the machine pistol, "are you that eager to pay me back for busting your beak back at Chandy's?"

  She stopped. "You didn't," she said.

  "Bull puckey."

  She made an irritable chopping motion with her hand. "What the hell are you doing here!"

  Cowboy laughed again. From somewhere downstairs came the ear-piercing crack of stun grenades and the duller thump of tear-gas bombs.

  "This easy livin' sure is slowing you down, Cass," he said. "First you let that guy in the headwaiter suit get the drop on you. Then you can't even figure out as how you're being rescued." He shook his head. "Wait'll I tell Reb and Sawbuck. They'll never believe it."

  "Why the hell are you dressed as a Blakie?"

  Cowboy gave her his big goofy grin. "Sierra Foxtrot, Cassie, we don't want ol' Percy thinking Chandy went and grabbed you back. He might think of comin' after you."

  * * *

  Cassie slid into the copilot's seat of the chopper on the front lawn. The pilot was a big blond man who was not a member of the Regiment. He nodded to her as members of the strike team piled aboard, then jumped the ship into the air. As they veered away from Stormhaven, she saw that the other craft, the one that had dropped Cowboy Payson onto her balcony in the proverbial nick of time, had landed behind the house. It wasn't bringing its rotors up to speed for takeoff.

  As the villa dwindled she felt a strange sense of regret. Then she balled her hands into fists and began to beat her forehead in a frenzy of rage and fear at the way she had frozen when Yoritomo drew down on her.

  "So Yoritomo wasn't your plant," Cassie said flatly.

  The Mirza Abdulsattah glanced aside at his employer, who sat surrounded by his cushions, leaning forward slightly like a vast, fascinated baby.

  "No," the gaunt security chief said. "We suspect that he was ISF."

  A cold wind blew down the corridors of Cassie's soul. Feeling sure the dreaded Breath of the Dragon was watching her and having it confirmed were different sensations entirely.

  "Who was your agent, then?"

  Abdulsattah smiled faintly. "Do you really need to know that, Lieutenant?"

  "No," she said. "What makes you think the Planetary Chairman is going to buy this Word of Blake dodge? He's been expecting you to try something ever since I escaped from you."

  "Fortunately, our raid on Stormhaven caused few casualties to either side," Uncle Chandy said. "We did, however, leave two dead behind. The Word of Blake terrorists captured by the Civilian Guidance Corps after the attack on the Compound will be able to identify them positively as former comrades."

  She sucked in a breath. She knew Abdulsattah's men had caught some live terrorists during the attack. That meant this smiling Buddha figure had ordered them killed and left behind to lend verisimilitude to the notion that it was ComStar schismatics who'd attacked the villa.

  It was no skin off any part of her anatomy—which had recently been returned to its normal coloration and was still prickling from the chemical bath. This fat and jolly-seeming man was still a Drac, still a Kurita, and he played by hard rules.

  So did she.

  She shook her head, sighed. The tapestry-hung walls of Chandy's sanctum seemed to be closing in, for reasons unconnected to nonexistent pangs of conscience over the fate of failed terrorists. "What happens now?"

  Chandrasekhar Kurita spread his chubby fingers. "We wait. The next move is up to Ninyu Kerai Indrahar."

  "He'll make it soon."

  "No doubt," Uncle Chandy said unflappably.

  "What about the bug I planted on Hosoya? Is it going to have time to turn up anything?"

  "Only time will tell. Insh'allah, as the Mirza might say: it's in God's hands."

  Cassie glanced aside at Abdulsattah, whose Grecoesque face showed no change of expression. Though the Combine's rulers found it expedient to compromise with its useful Arkab subjects, Islam was officially illegal. Uncle Chandy was in a puckish mood this evening.

  "What do I do now?"

  "You may return to your people," the Mirza said, "and wait."

  "Yes," Uncle Chandy added. "There'll be a part for you to play in the climax of our little drama. Never fear." He smiled. "Now, go back and rest while you can. They've just begun to celebrate what I understand to be a three-day series of colorful folk festivals." He spread his hands. "Perhaps you can find ways to divert yourself until—"

  Cassie kept her face lowered. It disappointed her that Chandy was trying to jolly her. She thought he knew her better.

  When it became obvious that her employer had no more to say, she stood up to go. At the door to the elevator she turned back. "There's one thing."

  "Yes?" Uncle Chandy said.

  "Percy," she said. "That is, the Earl of Fillington. I don't think he's got anything to do with this Clan thing. I want him kept out of it."

  Uncle Chandy scowled like an infant abruptly deprived of its toy. "Do you dare to make conditions with me?"

  "Yes."

  He laughed. "Excellent. I cherish those who remain true to their natures—especially when they are as adept at concealing them as you. Fly back to your nest, little bird, and rest assured that no harm shall befall your Earl that he doesn't insist on bringing on himself."

  32

  Masamori, Hachiman

  Galedon District, Draconis Combine

  1 November 3056

  The helicopter appeared from the west, over the center of town on the crisp, clear morning of the Day of the Saints. The radar atop the Citadel picked it up as a matter of course, but the human operators monitoring the array paid it no mind.

  When its circling took it within half a klick of the Compound wall, HTE Security broadcast a routine advisory to Third Battalion, which was on active perimeter guard. First was on standby, Second stood down.

  Today that meant recovering from last night's festivities, and preparing for tomorrow's. All Saints' Day served as a buffer between two of the most riotously popular holidays in the Trinity Worlds: Halloween and el Dia de los Muertos.

  Even as the message was crackling into the helmets of Third's MechWarriors, the chopper broke off and went
into a shallow full-power dive toward the Citadel.

  In the Draconis Combine that was tantamount to suicide. Corporate executives, to say nothing of the nobility, took their security seriously. Even if the mercs had not been primed for trouble on twenty-four-hour alert status, they would have been weapons-free in a case like this.

  Lieutenant JG William "Deputy Dawg" Carson of Infante had his Rifleman up on the five-meter "Mech step" that ran around the inside wall like the banco in a Galistean hacidenda's sitting room. Stationed a hundred meters north of the big double gates on Tai-sho Dalton Way, Carson spotted the helicopter banking into its dive. Carson's 'Mech was an older-style machine, with Imperator-A autocannons paired with Magna III heavy lasers in the arms, though it was slated for an upgrade when the Regiment got the money ahead.

  Carson traversed the Rifleman's torso left, leading the aircraft with his sighting pipper. As the helicopter flashed over the wall, he fired. The two laser beams didn't need to lead the target, and ionized air harmlessly in front of the helicopter. He had better luck with his autocannon burst, chewing off a chunk of the port stub wing and gouging the fuselage between cabin and tail rotor.

  By that point half of Infante had opened up on the intruder. 'Mechs all over the Compound joined in, including Reb Perez' Awesome, emerging from the 'Mech barns where Astro Zombie and the HTE techs had just finished installing an improved sensor suite. HTE Security, in their white helmets and powder-blue jumpsuits, joined in with sidearms, as a matter of pride.

  The chopper couldn't last long, and didn't. The yellow spear of a PPC beam intersected its rotor circle. As it stumbled in the air, a dozen other weapons found it, vaporizing skin and structure, knocking pieces off the tiny, fragile craft. It became a flaming hurtle, crashing like a meteor dead-center into the Compound and blowing up with a white flash and sky-splitting roar. The blast gouged out a shallow, thirty-meter-wide crater from the pavement; the chopper had been laden with explosives. Fortunately the attack occurred mid-shift, when there was little surface traffic within the Compound. The only casualties were several dozen ruptured eardrums and four Plant Maintenance techs who died when the stricken craft struck the golf cart they were riding.